


Tabloid Twaddle

by afteriwake



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Humor, Married Mary Morstan/John Watson, Minor Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper, Nice Mary Morstan, POV Mary Morstan, Press and Tabloids, Tabloids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-10-21
Packaged: 2018-04-27 10:58:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5045677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John decides to share some of the tabloid covers he sees with his wife when Sherlock & Molly get engaged and the tabloid speculation ramps up that it’s just a cover for romantic dalliances between Sherlock & John.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tabloid Twaddle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> So I've been seeing a lot more references to the idea that Mary is just a cover for John and Sherlock to have romantic liaisons and I decided to have a bit of fun with that, approaching it from the "What if that's what the popular opinion in England is?" angle, even if the truth is that it isn't. So I asked for prompts from my followers of the tabloids getting it all wrong and Sherlock, Molly, John & Mary dealing with it. This particular prompt came from **Marylocked** and said " _John and Mary are prepping for Baby girl Watson's 1st birthday, and laughing about a tabloid report that says that Sherlock's engagement to Molly is just him covering the fact that he and John are seeing each other behind Mary's back._." I had a lot of fun with this.

John had gone off to go get the cake for Louisa’s birthday party, leaving Mary to get the house ready for their guests. It had been a rather interesting week, in that it had started with the announcement of Sherlock and Molly getting engaged. The tabloids were having a field day with the news, and there had been reporters camped outside their home and the surgery wanting to get shots of the “lovesick doctor” who’d lost the “love of his life.” After all these years and the tabloids _still_ wanted to insist that Sherlock and John were secret lovers, having trysts whenever they could get a spare moment alone.

She shook her head, hanging streamers from the ceiling. She and Molly rather took it in stride, finding amusement in the whole thing. John would too, sometimes, depending on how much reporters got in his face. There had been a while after Janine had sold the fictitious story where they’d been bothersome, but it had died down until Sherlock and Molly had gone public with their relationship. She was fully expecting things to be as though a hornet’s nest had been stirred up, and to stay that way for quite some time, so it would be interesting to see what mood John was in when he came back home.

She was almost done getting the streamers up when the door opened and shut. “I’m home,” John called out. He seemed in a jovial enough mood, which boded well. If he’d been in a sour mood that wouldn’t have been good for the party.

“Did the cake turn out how we expected?” she called back.

“Exactly how we asked for,” he said, coming into the sitting room.

She gave him a smile. “Excellent,” she said. She got off the chair and then went over to him and followed him into the kitchen. He had two plastic sacks on his arm and she gestured to them. “What’s that?”

“Last minute supplies. Two bottles of cola, some juice for Lou since we were out of the white grape and peach juice she likes and something I thought might amuse you.”

“This will be good,” she said, taking the cake from him and setting it on the worktop. She looked over it and saw that it did indeed look exactly as they had hoped for: big enough to feed all the adults and children who’d been invited, “Happy First Birthday Louisa!” written in purple piped frosting and the edible confetti sprinkled all over. Nice and simple for when their daughter sank her grubby little hands in a corner of it and smushed it in her face. She turned to see John taking the beverages to the refrigerator and setting then inside, and all that were left in the sack seemed to be some magazines of some sort. Her eyebrow rose. “Reading material?”

“Thought you might want a laugh,” he said with a grin.

“Tabloids trash,” she said, shaking her head but grinning as well. “You could have just snapped shots of the covers, you know. Buying them doesn’t help put them out of business.”

“Nothing will ever put the buggers out of business,” he said, pulling out four different ones. 

“One can only dream,” she replied. She looked and saw they were The Mirror, The Sun, The Daily Express and The Daily Mail. She picked up The Mirror and cringed at the photo they’d found of Molly. Molly really was quite lovely. When it had become obvious to her that there was something between Molly and Sherlock she’d made it a point to take Molly out on several girls days out, knowing once the relationship became public there’d be photographers all over the place, wanting pictures of her looking her worst. Molly understood and, for the most part, these days she looked quite cute. But some photographer had managed to catch her first thing in the morning, stepping out of Baker Street to do something, and the headline accompanying the photo, “Holmes kicks fake fiancée to the curb,” didn’t do her justice.

John looked over her shoulder. “Did you know the photographer of that photo is trying to press charges against Molly for hitting him after he took it?” John asked.

Mary looked at him with wide eyes. “What?”

He nodded. “She smacked him in the shoulder for getting her out of Baker Street under false pretenses. Someone said there’d been an injury outside so she’d rushed out to see if she could help. He said he dislocated his shoulder.”

Mary snorted a laugh. “She probably could.”

“Oh?” John asked.

“Maybe not with a smack, but she’s fairly high ranked in krav maga, and she knows judo as well. She could do some serious damage to someone if she wanted to.” She glanced at her husband’s face and rolled her eyes a bit. “Who do you think I spar with twice a week?”

“I thought a personal trainer or something,” he said. “I just…Molly?”

She nodded. “Oh yeah. If you’ve ever wonder why Sherlock has no problems with her accompanying him on cases, that’s why.” She set the tabloid rag down and picked up the one from The Sun, laughing at the photo of her kissing Molly’s cheek and the headline “Secret relationship between the beards of secret lovers?”. “Oh, now, _that’s_ wonderful,” she said. “It’s not enough that you and Sherlock are secret lovers, now Molly and I are too?”

“Thought you’d get a kick out of that one,” she said.

“What do they expect us to do, all live together in the same house and swap partners on a nightly basis? Have a schedule pinned up somewhere that says on Mondays I get you in my bed, on Tuesdays I get Molly, and then maybe if I’m _really_ lucky I can get a taste of Sherlock myself on Wednesday if I’ve been a good little girl?” She rolled her eyes as she scanned the article. “It’s nonsense.”

“I doubt they think you deserve Sherlock,” he said. “I think they think I deserve him all to myself and you’re just the tart on the side. After all, I think he’s being painted as the jealous lover.”

“No, dear, that’s you,” she said, gesturing to the article. “Your lover isn’t satisfying you, as he’s being forced to pretend to love and care for the strumpet who would obviously rather be with her female ‘friend,’ and you’re jealous. It’s why the two of you haven’t been spending time together.”

“Well, I’m sure we’ll sneak off somewhere together during the party together today and have our wicked way with each other,” John said.

“Not if Molly doesn’t beat you there first,” Mary said with a laugh. She didn’t bother to look at the other two magazines before gathering them all up and tossing them all in the rubbish bin. John gave her a grin at that. “I appreciate your attempt to make me laugh, dear husband, but next time? Photos will suffice. Besides,” she continued, moving over to play with the collar of his shirt that stuck out over his jumper, “with photos then I can manipulate them and turn them into memes and then post them on Facebook for the amusement of our friends.”

John chuckled and pulled her closer. “I knew I definitely picked the right person to marry.”

“Who else would you have married?” she teased. “Sherlock?”

“Well, according to the tabloid rags—” She cut him off with a kiss, and after a moment they forgot all about getting ready for the party and the guests arriving in a few hours time and all that, as John began to maneuver them towards the bedroom. She did so love and adore this man, and it didn’t matter what the tabloids said, she knew he only had eyes for her.


End file.
